Lorenz Meyer's questions

I have a IBM System x3650 server with a ServeRaid controller and two RAID5 arrays, each consisting of 3 disks.

Yesterday, one disk failed (It was the Raid array that holds the data, the system is located on the sound array). I naively trusted the RAID controller in rebuilding the array. I shut down the server, replaced the failed disk with a new similar. I booted in the controller bios, where I could see that it recognized the new disk and was ready to rebuild (I had nothing to do, everything was automatic). I started the server and it rebuilt the array.

This morning everything seemed OK. The rebuild was finished, the array seemed sound. Only a few hours later, the mysql service crashed with a corrupted database. I managed to dump the data partially and restored the rest from backup. I thought I was OK.

But then I found that some active logfiles were corrupt: they included blocks from different random files. If I appreciate the situation correctly, only files modified since the rebuild has started are corrupted, but I'm not yet 100% sure for this. Somehow, the rebuild must have corrupted the data.

I ask this question to learn out of error. I hope the next time will be never...

What can be the reason that the rebuild failed ? What can I do better next time ?
Is it compulsary to cut the server from the network during rebuild ? I thought, the controller should manage concurrently rebuild and make ordinary reads and writes.
Or shouldn't this never happen, and maybe the controller is faulty ?

We use an application installed on a Windows 2003 server through Citrix Metaframe. Since Friday 17 march, most printers on the clients start printing white on white all distant print jobs.

We are using native printer drivers, not EasyPrint.

Restarting the server does not have any effect.

What could be the culprit ?

EDIT: The problem seems to be related with Windows Update KB4013429 (OS Build 14393.953). When I uninstall this update on the client computers, the printing resumes. My fear is that this update will reinstall with the next installation of updates. There is also a tool to hide updates, but this update is not hideable with this tool.

How could I solve this dilemma ?

I have an Exchange 2010 and Outlook 2003. The exchange server has a wildcard SSL certificate installed *.domain.com, (for use with autodiscover.domain.com and mail.domain.com). The local fqdn of the Exchange server is exch.domain.local. With this configuration there is no problem.

Now I started upgrading all Outlook 2003 to Outlook 2013, and I start to get consistently a certificate error in Outlook :

The Name on the security certificate is invalid or does not match the name of the site

I understand why I get that error: Outlook 2013 is connecting to exch.domain.local while the certificate is for *.domain.com.

I was ready to buy a SAN (Subject Alternate Names) Certificate, that contains the three domains exch.domain.local, mail.domain.com, autodiscover.domain.com. But there is a hindrance: the certificate provider (in my case Godaddy) requires that the domain is validated as being our property. Now it is not possible for an internal domain that is not accessible from the internet. So this turns out not to be an option.

Create self-signed SAN certificate with an Enterprise CA is an other option that is barely viable: There would be certificate error with every access to webmail, and I had to install the certificate on all Outlook clients.

What is a recommended viable solution ?

Is it possible to disable certificate checking in Outlook ?
Or how could I change the Exchange server configuration so that the public domain name is used for all connections ?
How to change the main FQDN of the Exchange server, as suggested in the answer, without the need of reinstalling the server ? Or is there another solution I'm not thinking of ?

Any advice is welcome.

On my domain controller (Server 2008 RTM SP2), the firewall is on for Private and Public profile, but it is of for Domain Profile.

I'd like to turn it on, but when I click on Windows Firewall Properties in Server Manager, the Firewall state displays Off and is greyed out. It cannot be a permission problem, because I'm logged as the Domain Admin and I can change the settings for the Private and Public Profile.

What can be the reason for this, and how to turn on the firewall ?

I'm regularly under brute force attacks on my Windows Server 2003 with Citrix installed. How can I automatically ban IP addresses that have several unsuccessful login attempts ?

This question has already a couple of answers that work on Windows 2008, and that I use successfully in my network (@MichaelKhalili's code). I also found sshd_block here, it applies also to Windows 2003 but is targeted on ssh. Unfortunately I don't have the expertise to adapt it for Terminal Server attempted logins.

Thanks for your help.

I would like to restart my server once the backup job is done.

I launch the backup job at the commande line using

wbadmin start backup [options]

This command only starts backup and exits. Therefore it is not possible to use something like this, because the server would restart immediately:

wbadmin start backup [options]
shutdown -r

Is there a solution to execute the backup and the restart with the same scheduled task, or do I simply have to schedule two tasks at a reasonable interval ?

I have a Windows Server 2008 SP2 with these Roles installed:

1. File server
2. Network Policy and Access Server / Routing and Remote Access
3. Network Policy and Access Server / NPS

The VPN connection is connecting, but it is not possible to share a Network folder situated on this server. Shares on other servers in the same network work as expected.

Trying to map a network share through Windows Explorer gives the following error:

The mapped network drive could not be created because the following error has occurred:
The specified network name is no longer available.

net view \\rras-server gives the following error, while net view \\other-servers works and shows the shared folders available.

Error 53: The network path was not found.

I tried to troubleshot and found these indications:

• Ping works on server name and IP address
• Nslookup shows that DNS lookup is working as it should
• Disabling the firewall on the server does not help
• The same problem occurs with Windows XP and Windows 7

Where could be the problem ?

The following behavior shows when the client computer is on the local network, but VPN is connected (The advanced setting Use default gateway on remote network is not checked):

In Windows Exporer, the network share shows with a red cross, and when I click on it, one of the following errors occurs:

An error has occurred while connecting [drive letter]: to [share name]
The parameter is incorrect

An error has occurred while connecting [drive letter]: to [share name]
The specified network name is no longer available

On the other hand, when I open Eplorer with the VPN disconnected, and then connect the VPN, the navigation in the network share continues to work.

Since a few days, I get the following error on my server:

Fatal error: Out of memory (allocated 262144) (tried to allocate 393216 bytes)

Usually this error is due to a memory consumption that is exceeding the configured memory_limit, but in my case there is no relation. The memory_limit is set to 128MB, and in this case, we not even reach 1MB.

Also the server does not have a big load, in fact it is an intranet server, and there are just a few people conected to it.

System: Windows Server 2003, 1Go RAM, only 600 MB used. Apache 2.2.4 PHP 5.2.3

This error is appearing randomly. The memory limit reached also is randomly between a few kB to a few MB. Sometimes restarting Apache is required to get rid of the error, sometimes it disapears itself.
Restarting Apache or the entire server helps temporarily.

Where could this problem come from ? How could I narrow down the error source ?

I need to apply Group Policy settings in the Local Group Policy object.

Creating a domain level GPO is not an option because many of the computers are not member of the AD domain, because these belong to our clients in a SaaS relationship.

Is there a way to change Local Group Policy settings by command line or by importing a file ? This would avoid me to edit the local group policy on each client using MMC.

The clients are both running Windows 7 and Windows XP.

We use remote desktop on a regular basis ( about 40 clients ).

On the client computers we save the passwords in Remote desktop connection ( by checking the checkbox 'save credentials'). Doing this the user name and the password gets saved in the registry.

On certain client machines, Remote desktop connection asks for the password after a few days. In the options of RDC, the checkbox 'allow the password to be saved' is unchecked, and we have to check it again to be able to save the password.

We did not find what triggers the loss of the passwords nor what could be the difference between the computers that loose the password and those that don't.

Notes :

1. We use RemoteApp. We usually connect using the shortcut created by installing the RemoteApp .msi package and not with RDC.
2. Most of the client computers are in remote locations and are in a Workgroup. We are SaaS provider for an application that runs on Remote Desktop

RemoteApp is Instable

According to my experience, Remote Desktop connections (especially RemoteApp connections) suffer from several instablities, which manifest themselves especially when using RemoteApp all day long.

There are several issues that affect stability and useability:

1. Connection breaks inadvertly. When the application is idle for a while (about 30 min) and the user takes back control, the application is unresponsive. The connection to the server is broken. After a few seconds the Message The connection has been lost. Attempting to reconnect you to your session. appears. The reconnection is not always successful. These broken connections have nothing to do with Idle Timeout settings.

   The logs (Event Log, TerminalServices-LocalSessionManager) show the disconnection at the moment when the user clicks on the application which becomes unresponsive. Some connections reconnect (ca. 80%, others log off ca. 20%).

2. Occasionally black screen on reconnection. Occasionally, when the a session is disconnected, and a user logs in again, he receives a black screen instead of the login screen (like here, here and elsewhere with different solutions). My settings: Disconnected sessions are logged off after 5 minutes.

Context

I have two Windows Server 2008 R2 with RDP and RemoteApp installed. I have Windows XP and Windows 7 clients that connect to it. The users run the RemoteApp all day long, but they may let the application idle during an hour or so.

What I did so far

Keepalive on server side improved disconnections

Thanks to @hyp, I got a step closer to a stable situation. I configured a keepalive on server side by configuring local group policy:

Computer Configuration -> Policies -> Admin Templates -> Windows Components -> Remote Desktop Services -> Remote Desktop Session Host -> Connections -> Configure keep-alive connection interval

The situation is better, but still not satisfactory. The connection still breaks inadvertedly, but less frequently (I get half the number of disconnections, and I did not get any more any help desk calls on this problem). Now, what happens is that the server notices when the connection is broken, disconnects the session and logs the user out. The user experience is now better, because the session breaks immediately when the network incident is happening, unlike before when the session broke only when the user interacted.

But, what I would like is that the Client Computer notices the disconnection and tries automatically to reconnect. This will avoid that the user need to login again.

Is it a general problem with RemoteApp that the connections are not reliable ? Does somebody make extensive usage of RDP and has this same problem ? Or are out there people that never encountered this ?

If RemoteApp is as sensitive to minor network perturbances, how do other cope with the problem ? If it is only as sensitive in my context, how to determine if the problem is with my server configuration or with my ISP ?

I there something else I could do to get even more stable RDP connections ?